“Yeah, it will. But you oughtn’t mind that. I thought you liked firsthand views of trouble. Better give me the names and addresses of your guests. If they and Coleman account for your whereabouts Friday night and over the weekend, nothing serious will happen to you; though you’ll have to go down to Quesada and let the county officials third-degree you.”
“Shall we go now?”
“I’m going back tonight. Meet me at the Sunset Hotel there in the morning. That’ll give me time to work on the officials—so they won’t throw you in the dungeon on sight.”
I went back to the agency and put in a Quesada call. I couldn’t get hold of Vernon or the sheriff, but Cotton was reachable. I gave him the information I had got from Fitzstephan, promising to produce the novelist for questioning the next morning.
The marshal said the search for the girl was still going on without results. Reports had come in that she had been seen—practically simultaneously—in Los Angeles, Eureka, Carson City, Denver, Portland, Tijuana, Ogden, San Jose, Vancouver, Porterville, and Hawaii. All except the most ridiculous reports were being run out.
The telephone company could tell me that Owen Fitzstephan’s Saturday morning phone-call had not been a long-distance call, and that nobody in Quesada had called a San Francisco number either Friday night or Saturday morning.
Before I left the agency I visited the Old Man again, asking him if he would try to persuade the district attorney to turn Aaronia Haldorn and Tom Fink loose on bail.
“They’re not doing us any good in jail,” I explained, “and, loose, they might lead us somewhere if we shadowed them. He oughtn’t to mind: he knows he hasn’t a chance in the world of hanging murder-raps on them as things now stack up.”
The Old Man promised to do his best, and to put an operative behind each of our suspects if they were sprung.
I went over to Madison Andrews’ office. When I had told him about Fitzstephan’s messages, and had given him our explanation of them, the lawyer nodded his bony white-thatched head and said:
“And whether that’s the true explanation or not, the county authorities will now have to give up their absurd theory that Gabrielle killed her husband.”
I shook my head sidewise.
“What?” he asked explosively.
“They’re going to think the messages were cooked up to clear her,” I predicted.
“Is that what you think?” His jaws got lumpy in front of his ears, and his tangled eyebrows came down over his eyes.
“I hope they weren’t,” I said; “because if it’s a trick it’s a damned childish one.”
“How could it be?” he demanded loudly. “Don’t talk nonsense. None of us knew anything then. The body hadn’t been found when—”
“Yeah,” I agreed; “and that’s why, if it turns out to have been a stunt, it’ll hang Gabrielle.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said disagreeably. “One minute you’re talking about somebody persecuting the girl, and the next minute you’re talking as if you thought she was the murderer. Just what do you think?”
“Both can be true,” I replied, no less disagreeably. “And what difference does it make what I think? It’ll be up to the jury when she’s found. The question now is: what are you going to do about the ten-thousand-dollar demand—if it’s on the level?”
“What I’m going to do is increase the reward for her recovery, with an additional reward for the arrest of her abductor.”
“That’s the wrong play,” I said. “Enough reward money has been posted. The only way to handle a kidnapping is to come across. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the only way. Uncertainty, nervousness, fear, disappointment, can turn even a mild kidnapper into a maniac. Buy the girl free, and then do your fighting. Pay what’s asked when it’s asked.”
He tugged at his ragged mustache, his jaw set obstinately, his eyes worried. But the jaw won out.
“I’m damned if I’ll knuckle down,” he said.
“That’s your business.” I got up and reached for my hat. “Mine’s finding Collinson’s murderer, and having her killed is more likely to help me than not.”
He didn’t say anything.
I went down to Hubert Collinson’s office. He wasn’t in, but I told Laurence Collinson my story, winding up:
“Will you urge your father to put up the money? And to have it ready to pass over as soon as the kidnapper’s instructions come?”
“It won’t be necessary to urge him,” he said immediately. “Of course we shall pay whatever is required to ensure her safety.”
XVI
The Night Hunt
I caught the 5:25 train south. It put me in Poston, a dusty town twice Quesada’s size, at 7:30; and a rattle-trap stage, in which I was the only passenger, got me to my destination half an hour later. Rain was beginning to fall as I was leaving the stage across the street from the hotel.
Jack Santos, a San Francisco reporter, came out of the telegraph office and said: “Hello. Anything new?”
“Maybe, but I’ll have to give it to Vernon first.”
“He’s in his room in the hotel, or was ten minutes ago. You mean the ransom letter that somebody got?”
“Yeah. He’s already given it out?”
“Cotton started to, but Vernon headed him off, told us to let it alone.”
“Why?”
“No reason at all except that it was Cotton giving it to us.” Santos pulled the corners of his thin lips down. “It’s been turned into a contest between Vernon, Feeney, and Cotton to see which can get his name and picture printed most.”
“They been doing anything except that?”
“How can they?” he asked disgustedly. “They spend ten hours a day trying to make the front page, ten more trying to keep the others from making it, and they’ve got to sleep some time.”
In
